


every river has an end

by crownedcarl



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Mental Instability, Psychological Trauma, Sleepwalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 11:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12035136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownedcarl/pseuds/crownedcarl
Summary: It comes to him in his dreams, sometimes: Theo wide-eyed, frantic and hopeless.





	every river has an end

**Author's Note:**

> alternate take on events in 6a/b. title credit goes to natalie wee!

Liam has dreams; trembling fever dreams in sepia tones, all of them disorienting, leaving him frantic.

The scene he begins with is the same as before. His feet are bare on the forest floor, his heels digging into mud, his toes crunching over piles of dead leaves. There are birds chirping quietly in the trees above, and a gray sky hanging overhead, pale clouds drifting by in slow motion, bound for an unknown destination. The sound of laughter breaks the stillness, and a boy’s voice floats to him, the words muddled and unclear.

Standing in the forest, Liam smells blood in the air. All of October, Liam dreams the same dream about the same forest and the same shadow of a boy in the endless forest, his heart in his throat when he wakes up, far too hot beneath the duvet, his pulse hammering hard enough that he can feel it in his teeth. There's sweat matting his hair to his forehead, rabid pulse hammering in his throat. Liam shivers. His window is open.

The dreams continue, sliding into the November chill. The boy is running, always running, and Liam is always watching him from a distance, never able to catch up as he slips in the mud and falls, landing in shallow puddles, smelling the blood in the air. The taste of terror on his tongue is sharp, but the fear doesn't belong to him. It's coming from beyond the trees, where the shadow runs.

He dreams, repeating the same images every night: yellow eyes watching him, animals stalking through the woods, creatures with blood-matted fur slinking between the trees, circling until Liam has been found and devoured. In his dreams, the ground is cold and damp, Liam’s breath fogging the crisp air, and there are paws thudding softly across the forest floor, leaving a trail. Over and over, the dream pokes and prods at him, asking him to understand, asking for forgiveness.

“Not all dreams have some deeper meaning,” Mason tells him, “Sometimes, that’s all they are. _Dreams._ Don’t overthink it, dude.”

Liam nods, but he’s not paying much attention to listening, staring into the distance at nothing at all. He thinks about his open window with curtains billowing in the night breeze, and he thinks about the fever dreams. He thinks about the mud at the foot of his bed, the dirt between his toes, the bits of brush and undergrowth that cling to his ankles as he wakes up. He's been going somewhere at night, lately. These aren’t simple dreams, anymore.

He vaguely considers asking Scott about it, but decides not to. He doesn’t need another person telling him to leave it alone.

-

Theo is long gone by the time the Ghost Riders are defeated. Nothing left for him in Beacon Hills, he’d claimed, and Liam hadn’t had a chance to convince him otherwise. He spent two uncomfortable days asking himself why it mattered, anyway.

He thinks all of them must have been idiots for buying Theo’s act, the first time around. After the showdown at the hospital, Liam can’t believe that he fell for it, because the raw elation in Theo’s face had been the first genuine expression Liam can remember seeing from him, and the facade Theo had paraded around at the start puts a sour taste in Liam’s mouth.

It was so obvious, looking back. Theo wasn’t a great actor. Liam didn’t have anything real to compare him to, is all.

The elation sticks with him, for a while. The terror, too. It comes to him in his dreams, sometimes: Theo wide-eyed, frantic and hopeless.

-

Late in the night, Liam wakes up to gunshots; a lot of them, concentrated fire, but his mind has been playing tricks on him, lately. He sighs, rolls over, and falls back asleep. The next morning, he's forgotten all about it. 

-

The sheriff tells them there’s been sightings of a wolf as the weather grows colder, from fall to winter. He takes these calls more seriously, now, knowing what he knows. “Black wolf,” he tells them, “Roaming the preserve. No attacks, yet, but I want you all to keep an eye out, alright?”

Liam doesn’t mention his dreams. He can’t see how that would help, but the animal sounds somehow familiar, sending sparks of recognition through his bones. “Yeah,” he promises, “We’ll be careful.”

-

He ends up on a bridge, sometimes, standing on the bridge deep in the woods where the creek runs harsh and haunting below. Liam learned to control his impulses long ago, under Scott’s gently watchful eye; he can’t think of a reason why he ends up on the bridge, but he leans across the railing and wonders what the sensation of falling must be like, of floating in the water and being pulled under. He wonders if there would be pain, beneath the water.

These things aren’t happening in a dream, right now. Reality is much, much worse, because Liam expects there to be a boy on the bridge, a boy in a hoodie, a boy to keep him from jumping off the bridge, but the night is cold and long and Liam is alone.

He hears a wolf howling, searching. Liam stands there for a long time and doesn’t return the call.

-

His heart is pounding, the beat of it in Liam’s ears as if it’s coming out of a loudspeaker somewhere, amplified until it drowns out all the other noises of the woods. In a way, it’s almost serene, floating in a bubble of what eventually becomes white noise, his toes digging into the dirt, the cold air filling his lungs. He’s been looking for hours, doesn’t know what for, but there are tracks and there’s a scent and, god, there’s something living in these woods that Liam is longing for, something he’s missing.

Theo comes, eventually. Every dream plays out differently. Theo is undressed, bared to the world, his faulty heart beating solidly where Liam places his palm on Theo’s naked chest.

People say a lot with their bodies. Theo’s has never been afraid of anything.

“Where did you go?” Liam breathes, his breath fogging in the chilly air, and all Theo does is laugh, sparkling and crystal clear, chin bumping Liam’s cheek. Maybe that’s all his dreams amount to; fulfilling a need, acting out a fantasy, but Liam has never fantasized about Theo staring at him with hollow eyes, the depths of his sadness all but unfathomable.

"I'm wherever you want me to be."

Liam thought he understood, but closure is a tricky thing. How do you say goodbye to someone who isn’t there to hear it, anymore?

-

After the Wild Hunt, after the streets are quiet again, the hunters arrive. The sheriff is stretched thin; bodies are piling up, and it’s hard to keep the peace when people are arming themselves and going after the supernatural with firepower and fear on their side. The body count keeps on rising, steady and inevitable.

The sheriff recovers a body, eventually. There’s so much blood, Liam can almost taste it.

“I’m afraid he didn’t stand a chance,” Deaton relays, later, and Liam is left staring down at his feet with wide, disbelieving eyes, realizing that hope is a terrible thing. Dreams don’t come true. “If it’s any consolation, your friend died quick. It was a clean way to go, all things considered.”

“All things considered,” Liam echoes, but it’s without feeling. No relief, no anger. He’s past all of it, by now, and is left with nothing.

A wound is growing, somewhere deep and dark inside of him. He wasted so much time that he'll never get back, and there's a boy's body on a slab, his face covered. Deaton had gently said it was for the best. Liam didn't need to see the damage, he was told. He doesn't know if he agrees.

"My condolences," Deaton murmurs, "For your loss."

-

Winter brings a heavy snowfall. Liam leaves footprints on the forest floor, leaving a trail for others to follow. He told Mason he would go straight home, after practice, but his path leads him deep into the woods, to the silent bridge where the creek has frozen over beneath a thin sheet of ice. If he jumped, he would break right through.

He still dreams, once in a while. Sometimes, there's a lover standing so close the shape of him is blurred, and sometimes, he dreams about a golden room with a warm fire where everyone is happy and everyone gets what they want, if only for a moment.

Theo's last attempt at a phone call was to Scott. Liam hadn't been so much as an afterthought.

The wolf from his dreams is howling, howling, and Liam is getting snowflakes stuck in his eyelashes, staring up at the sky. He thinks about what parents tell their children when someone dies; _he's in a better place, honey_ and Liam wishes that it were true, but he knows better. Theo was never a saint.

Turning his back on the bridge feels almost as an irreversible act, a betrayal; the wolf howls a mournful note, then quiets.

-

The last thing Theo ever says to Liam is _don't lie, you're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone_ and months later, Liam says _you were such a know-it-all_ to an empty room; the wind calms from a shriek to a sigh, and Liam considers it an apology accepted.


End file.
